Meet us in Honiton, Exeter, Taunton and Yeovil

Call our Helpline 03339390188

Our Values

Integrity

Having Integrity in all that we do. This means being honest and principled. This means being honest and realistic with you when giving advice. This means being honest in our dealings with the Court and other professionals.

This means protecting client confidentiality but being principled to breach confidentiality when a child protection issue arises within mediation. It means maintaining neutrality and confidences within mediation.

This means charging a fair price for what we do and it means referring on work which would be better dealt with by other professionals.

This means treating people with respect. But respect goes further.

This is fundamental both being a Solicitor and a Mediator.

Solution Focused

Being solution focused. Whether instructing us as Solicitors or Mediators you are doing so because you have a problem and you want to find a solution to it. It is easy to get bogged down in process and side-tracked by niggles which are ultimately irrelevant and which can be costly.

We focus on the bigger picture. We work with you to identify the problem, to understand what you want to achieve and we work with you to identify solutions which are realistic. We then work out a plan to assist you to achieve what is realistic. Events may require plans to be rethought, but we will always be focused on achieving the best realistic outcome possible.

This means we may sometimes have to give you advice or information which is unpalatable or uncomfortable.

Maintaining good relationships with other professionals makes life easier generally, but it also helps us to work with others to achieve solutions.

Child Centred

Being child centred. Children are precious. Their welfare and voice should never be forgotten or ignored. This almost goes without saying, but in our view this principle should never be left unsaid.

Commitment

Showing Commitment. We are committed to do our best for you. We always try our best to do what we say we are going to do.

We are committed to high standards in what we do and to working at least to the level of best practice.

Creative

Being creative. What worked yesterday might not work today or tomorrow and might not be the best solution anyway! We value the ability to “think outside the box”, to think laterally. We like mediation and collaborative law as dispute resolution processes as they allow us to explore a problem and possible solutions in ways which are impossible in a legalistic mind-set.

There is no such thing as perfection. Everything could always be done better in some way. We don’t claim that that what we do cannot be improved upon. We are therefore always open to new ideas.

Our founder Ian Walker trained as a Family Mediator very early in his career and when family mediation was very far from the mainstream of family practice. He brought Collaborative Law to Devon. When the next idea comes up we will look at it very carefully to see if it could make us better at what we do. (Although we don’t like every new idea; for example we are not keen on the idea of arbitration in family cases).

Respectful

Being respectful. It is not very nice when someone is rude to you. We all try to teach our children to have good manners; yet do not always practice what we preach! There is no need to be rude, and it generally makes it harder to get what we want. We are all stressed or under pressure in some way. Getting on with people and respecting and embracing our differences is very important. It is far too easy to be rude or impolite to others.

We find that you get more out of people (whether personally or professionally) if you behave towards them in the same way that you would expect them to behave towards you.

Latest News

We are a little over midway through the year and are feeling very inundated with good quality work. This means we are at a stage where we could really benefit from adding to our legal team. We have a versatile team led by Ian Walker (Chair Devon Resolution). Kim Stradling, Sandy Powell and David Howell-Richardson […]

Logo meanings

This is the Logo for the Law Society Mediation Panel.

Ian is an Advanced (Practitioner) Member.

Membership is by assessment and the mediator is required to demonstrate a “high level of skill and experience as a family mediator”. In 2002 Ian was accredited as a mediator by Resolution and was one of the first 20 mediators to attain that standard. (He allowed the Resolution mediation accreditation to lapse in 2007).

This is the Logo for the Law Society Children Panel.

Ian is has been a member since 1996.

Membership is following an assessment and is for a five years at a time.

The Law Society website says “Members will have shown, to the satisfaction of the Law Society, that they have and will maintain a high level of knowledge, skills, experience and practice in the area of children law, be that in private practice or working for a local authority.”

Members are police checked. The number of members is relatively small.

We can use this Logo because Ian Walker is a member of the FMA. The FMA was founded in 1986 by six family practitioners who founded the model of mediation now used by all family mediators. Ian Walker was trained as a mediator by two of the founders and in consulting directly with children as part of the mediation process by another. In 2012 Ian was elected by members to the Governing Board of the FMA

Ian Walker is a member of Resolution. He has been a member since 1994.

Resolution is an organisation of family lawyers who are committed to a code of practice aimed at minimising distress in family disputes. It was founded as the Solicitors Family Law Association (SFLA) in 1981. One of its founders formed the FMA.

Ian Walker was the elected Chair of the Devon region of Resolution between 2009 and 2012

Ian Walker is accredited by Resolution as a specialist family Solicitor. Ian was the first Solicitor in Exeter and East Devon to gain this Accreditation in 2001, shortly after the scheme was launched.

Ian Walker was trained as a Collaborative Family Lawyer in 2005. Collaborative Law originated in the USA in the 1980’s as an alternative to Mediation. It was introduced to the UK in 2003/4 by Resolution. Ian Walker persuaded Resolution to run the first Collaborative Law training in Devon in 2005.

Although Ian Walker was amongst the first 20 Mediators to be accredited by Resolution in 2002, this logo simply shows that Ian Walker was trained as a mediator by Resolution. In fact Ian’s trainers were two of the founders of FMA and pioneers of using mediation to resolve financial issues in divorce in the UK. There is no logo to show it, but Ian is also trained by Resolution to supervise other mediators and to meet with children as part of the mediation process.

Basically, this means that we offer some Legally Aided Services.

From 1 April 2013 the Legal Aid Board will have become the Legal Services Agency. From ths date Civil legal aid will not have a logo but legal aid providers will be permitted to use the text strapline ‘Contracted with the Legal Aid Agency’ instead.

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